Clicks and impressions

How Google prevents invalid activity

Our specialists carefully monitor clicks and impressions on Google ads in order to protect your interests as well as those of our advertisers. To do this, we use both automated systems and human reviews, analyzing all ad clicks and impressions for any invalid click activity that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings.

Google's proprietary technology analyzes clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Our system uses sophisticated filters to distinguish between activity generated through normal use by users and activity that may pose a risk to our advertisers. Some examples of this activity include clicks or impressions generated by unethical users, automated robots and traffic sources, and publishers encouraging clicks on their ads. Our system enables us to filter out most invalid clicks and impressions, and our advertisers are not charged for this activity.

In addition to our automated system, we have a team dedicated to detecting invalid activity using several specialized tools and a wide variety of techniques based on extensive experience tracking and monitoring user behavior and analyzing scenarios. We continually upgrade our detection mechanisms to proactively combat invalid activity.

To prevent invalid clicks in your account, ensure that your ad implementation complies with our program policies, and that you haven’t paid for traffic from an unreliable source. You can learn more about invalid activity and ad implementation by reading our beginners guide.